


The Rust Looks Just Right in the Light

by redtypewriter



Series: White Black Gray [2]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Garrus's Loyalty Mission, Morality, Paragon Shepard (Mass Effect), Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29848848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redtypewriter/pseuds/redtypewriter
Summary: Shepard and Garrus on the Sidonis mission, realizing that things can't always go back to the way they used to be.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian, Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Series: White Black Gray [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2194470
Kudos: 8





	The Rust Looks Just Right in the Light

**Author's Note:**

> What's that? More paragon Shepard morality puzzles? Yup! I ended up writing like....20 pages of random ficlets so there may be more coming and they're all...Like This. Cuz I can't stop thinking about these two crazy kids and their two unique approaches to doing the right thing. ( tite from....another wolf parade song? more likely than you think)

Shepard sat next to Garrus in the skycar, stunned by his behavior with Harkin only ten minutes ago. She was glad that the two of them had come alone, she wasn’t sure how she would feel about making excuses for him.

He was angry. No- Shepard understood anger. Garrus was vengeful. In a way that she had never seen him, and it scared her.

“This isn’t like you, Garrus.”

His insides twisted up in anger, in resentment, in grief for the version of him that she had known. How she had managed to convince him that killing doctor Saleon would’ve been wrong, how angry he had been before realizing that the real reason that Saleon’s escape had angered him so was that he had gotten away and made Garrus feel like a fool. She had convinced him once, and he thought he would be better for it, but then things changed. Everything changed. 

Who was she to tell him that he wasn’t acting like himself? How would she even know anymore?

“What do you want from me, Shepard?” He muttered, and her stomach turned in knots, mourning the two lost years. 

“What would you do if someone betrayed you?” He asked, more sharply now.

“I don’t know. But I wouldn’t let it change me.” She said before she really could consider it. Truth be told, she had no idea what she would do. She wanted to say it would be different, but she wasn’t so sure.

She hadn’t expected his harsh bark of laughter.

“I don’t think you should be talking about not letting things change you, Shepard.”

She was taken aback, and more than a little offended. “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

His anger was rising inside of him now, anger he never wanted to direct at her but there was nobody else there, and things he had thought but hadn’t wanted to say this way were coming up. 

“I’m saying I’ve seen you do a lot of shit you never would’ve dreamed of pulling back on the SR-1 since you’ve been back. I never thought I’d see you be the one to shoot first, ask questions later but you have. But _we_ all still need to live up to your old standards, huh? _You_ can be angry and vengeful and do the hard thing for the greater good but the _second_ that Miranda wants to kill the man that sold out her family, or Zaeed wants to kill the guy that ruined his life, they need to put down their weapons and be the bigger person.” He seethed, almost immediately feeling guilty for telling her about these feelings this way, but it wasn’t enough to stop his anger.

“So _you’re_ criticizing _me_ for being too lawless? Do you even hear yourself, Garrus?” She said, her instinct to raise up her proverbial hands and defend herself stronger than her need to think about whether or not he was right.

“No, Shepard, I’m criticizing you for being a hypocrite.” 

There it was. The word that had been dogging her conscience since she stole the SR-1 to go to Ilos. Hypocrite. Practice what you preach oh paragon of virtue Margaret Shepard, she thought. Separating kids trying to fight in the lunch room while still taking a swing if somebody else started it.

She thought she had grown out of it. Until she had to steal Normandy, that is. Once that bridge had been crossed everything seemed a little less black and white. The people telling her what to do seemed a little more flawed, their demands a little more flexible. She supposed that flexibility is how she ended up working with Cerberus, desperately trying to adhere to the rules that she was making up as she went along. 

She remembered the woman that used to admonish Garrus for his dismissal of the rules, declaring that cutting corners was what got people hurt. She remembered how good it felt when he finally told her that he understood what she was trying to tell him. Then she remembered the night before Ilos, wandering down into the garage, and Garrus asked her if stealing the Normandy wasn’t “a little extreme” after everything she had taught him. She had defended herself at the time, just like now, but it was strange to be on the other side for once. She was embarrassed, but also proud, seeing what an effect she had had on him, and glad that she had somebody to hold her up to her own standards.

Garrus had been one of the first people on the ship that made her feel like a real leader. Out of everybody, he hung on her every word, believed in her to the point where she felt unworthy of it, and seemed to try and dissect meaning from her every action. It felt good, for somebody to care so much about what you have to say, to have a chance to be a positive influence on somebody that has your back. It was obvious that he had thought of her as a mentor, and her moral declarations having such an influence on him made her feel as though those declarations were always irrefutably right.

Though, looking at him now, it doesn’t seem like anything she taught him really stuck. When she left him he was going back to C-Sec, and reapplying to be a Spectre, but he was going to do it right, not cut corners, and be worthy of the privilege given to protectors by those they were protecting. She wondered if her death was all that had happened to make that man get on a ship to Omega to kill mercs without discrimination or due process. 

He was right. Undoubtedly, 100% correct in his assessment of her, regardless of how angry he was. But she was a hypocrite, whether she liked it or not, whatever she did or didn’t do, she wanted _Garrus_ to do better. 

“Is that really what you think of me, Garrus?” Her words were hard as granite, and he felt his resolve waver.

She leaned back without another word and stared hard out the window. The silence for the rest of the ride was almost painful, and the drive was long enough for him to start to regret what he had said, but the closer they got the more those worries were overshadowed by his revenge.

She didn’t say anything until they parked. She looked him dead in the eye, and he met it in force. 

“It’s not too late. We can turn around.” She said, her voice more casual than he could stand.

“If I don’t bring him to justice, who will? Nobody else knows what he’s done. Nobody cares. My team _deserves_ justice.” He fired back, his anger peaking and falling throughout the car ride.

“Is shooting a man in the head in the middle of a civilian area justice to you, Garrus?” She said, her anger returning- remembering how angry he had been with his position when he had first met her, how his biggest regret was that C-Sec refused to shoot down a car with hostages inside. She thought he had come around to her way of thinking a long time ago, and she didn’t like this side of him. It was becoming clear again _why_ she had told him all those things back on the SR-1, and she just wished that they had stuck.

Shepard had noticed that. One thing about coming back from the dead was seeing exactly how long it had taken for people to stop caring about what she had said and done.

He couldn’t answer. “Don’t stand in my way when we find Sidonis, Shepard. I mean it.”

 _Or what?_ She almost said, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.

This was supposed to be about Garrus, but her own crisis was overtaking her thoughts. She saw Sidonis and hypocrisy be damned, she stood in front of Garrus’s shot.

Sidonis blithered his way through a vow to do better before running again, Garrus said to let him go, and before he ran, she stepped out of the way. She knew him, knew he was still watching, hoped that she saw that she hadn’t truly taken the choice from him, and hoped he wouldn’t take it.

Garrus was left there on the catwalks of the citadel, sick to his stomach and feeling betrayed all over again. Even worse is that he knew her. She would expect him to thank her for this eventually, but he couldn’t ever see that happening. He chose to ignore that last second after she stepped away and before he ran that Sidonis’s head was clearly in his sights.

“I know you’re gonna want to talk about this, Shepard, but I don’t. Not yet anyway.” Was what he managed to get out before.

She nodded, getting into the car, and he sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window at the citadel.

“I just...want to know that I did the right thing. For my men. They deserved to be avenged.” He said after ten minutes of agonizing silence between them.

“Yes. They do.” She said, then was quiet for another moment. “But sometimes it’s not about what the dead deserve, but what the living need.” She said, and frowned, knowing the words applied to more than just Garrus and his squad.

Garrus didn’t talk to her that night. Or the next day. Or the one after that. It took a week and a half of stewing alone in the battery for her to come to talk to him. Maybe she was hoping he would be less angry, and he wasn’t sure he was. He was less likely to fly off the handle, but he could barely make sense of what had happened, let alone how he felt about it. He felt aimless, weak, resentful, and a litany of other things he could barely hold onto.

He didn’t say anything when she came in. She didn’t ask if he was free to talk, either. She just came in and sat down on a crate by the door, and took a deep breath. She hadn’t said anything yet, and he realized with discomfort exactly how much he had missed her presence, He thought that seeing her here would make him angrier, but he felt calmer just for her being there.

“How’ve you been feeling?” She said after a few false starts, and he wasn’t sure he liked what she had landed on, didn’t like her false casual tone like she was talking to a wild animal or a child she was trying not to spook.

“How do you think I am, Shepard?” He said, sounding exhausted.

“I honestly have no idea.” She admitted, and he turned around to face her. She looked smaller than usual, her shoulders a little more sunken in, and her eyebrows pushed together in concern.

“I’m still...pretty angry.” He clarified, and she looked down.

“Oh.”

He felt that familiar anger bubble up inside of him again. The very specific anger he only felt when people tried to tell him what was good for him. He used to feel it back when he first met her, but it had gone away when he realized that she was usually right. She had convinced him then, but now he knew more, he was more set in his ways, and he didn’t think he could bring himself to sway. Not yet.

“What did you expect? That I’ve been in here for a week planning all the ways I’m going to apologize to you for acting out?” His hands balled up into fists, wishing that she would just yell at him and stop looking so sad, like all of this had just been a squabble. 

“What? No-”

“Because that’s not going to happen, Shepard. I had the man that killed the people I was responsible for in my sights and you let him get away. I’m not going to apologize for being angry, and I’m not going to forgive you that easily.” He said it, sounding much more sure than he felt. 

She looked like he had slapped her. She scrubbed her face with her hand and furrowed her brow deeply, before squaring her shoulder and looking at him, her face emotionless.

“Fine. Fine. I’ve kept tabs on him since last week. You still want him dead? Let’s go. Normandy can be there in a few hours.”

He scoffed. “Don’t do that. Don’t pretend you’re giving me a choice when it’s damn clear what you want me to do.”

“No, Garrus. Don’t _you_ act like I’m _not_ giving you a choice just because you know what I want you to do.” She said, jumping off the crate and standing to her full height. She was almost a foot shorter than him but he still felt like she filled up the room.

He took a step backward and landed against the console, his hands holding tight on the edge, the fight taken out of him, but her eyes were still blazing. _I could’ve done it_. He remembered what he had been trying to forget while he stayed back here all week blaming her for standing in his way when all she really did was make him explain himself.

“So should I tell Joker the coordinates?”

Garrus felt like he was deflating. _I could’ve done it. I could’ve taken the shot._ Repeated in his mind over and over again.

He couldn’t speak, couldn’t admit that this anger wasn’t for her. Couldn’t take back all those strong words and false bravado. But he knew he couldn’t kill Sidonis either. Not now.

“No.” He hung his head. “Don’t do that. I…” He looked away, he couldn’t bear to see if she had that secret little satisfied look she got after she had suckered someone else into giving up their ambitions by a few inspirational words from Commander Shepard. But he also couldn’t bear not knowing if that was how she thought of him- if he was just another Saren to talk down until he damned himself. When he looked up at her, all he saw was concern and care. So much that he was taken aback. So much that he couldn’t fathom that so much care for him was still inside of her after all he had done since she died.

“I’m really sorry things turned out the way they did, Garrus.” Shepard said quietly, her eyes shining with unshed tears, and if turians could cry, he’d be holding back his own just as valiantly

“You were right, too. About me being...hypocritical.” She said sadly.

 _No,_ he wanted to say _I was wrong, I was just angry._ But he couldn’t, not after this. He wanted to make her feel better, but more than that he didn’t want to hold back from telling her how he actually felt anymore.

“I shouldn’t’ve said it like that. That wasn’t how I wanted to talk to you about that.” He settled on.

“How did you want to talk about it?”

“Like this, I guess.”

She looked down at her nails. “I just don’t know who’s rules I’m even supposed to follow anymore, Garrus.” She said honestly, and his heart clenched.

“That’s no excuse. I know that ever since I came back I just don’t know where I fit in anymore. I don’t trust the people that I’m working for, so I need to always just follow my own instincts, and it’s sometimes hard to determine the direction of my own compass when I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

Garrus laughed softly. “I...know how that feels.”

She nodded, knowing that he did.

“Am I wrong to try and get others to do better if I can’t always be better?”

He didn’t want to think about a world where Shepard didn’t encourage others to do the right thing, he didn’t want to see the damage the people she influenced would’ve done otherwise.

“No. You’re not- just...give other people a chance to fail, too.”

So much between them had changed, they had changed, and would never be the same people that they were, but she didn’t mind, and neither did he. It felt more equal, somehow, like they both tumbled into well that left them standing close together on even ground.

“I’ve never known what to do with gray, Shepard, but I feel like both of us...need to learn.” He said, realizing that he had wanted to say that to her for a long time.

She laughed and nodded, wiping at her eye at a tear she wouldn’t let him see. 

“Meet me in the middle?” She said, her voice sounding wet.

“I’ll see you there.” 


End file.
